Could you make a list of good books, separated by ebook vs physical book. Last year I bought about $400 worth of books and almost all of the as physical books. I do not read ebooks because as an old dinosaur I don’t like reading on the computer. My definition of a good book is a book that I will read more than once.

Yes, I totally understand your feeling about traditional e-books I feel much the same way. I don’t want to want to get into a general e-book vs print book discussion but rather point out that the books we sell here on the PFRE blog can be read on any device and in hardcopy form. This is NOT the case for other types of e-books sold by Amazon or in the Apple store. Here’s how the books we sell here at the PFRE blog are different:

10 Responses to “The Books We Sell On PFRE Offer Benefits Of Ebooks And Hardcopy Books”

Hi Larry and readers,
I have to compliment Larry and Simon Maxwell for putting together a phenomenal book on using Enfuse. The book is thoughtfully and methodically put together in a way that answers all questions about photographing and using Enfuse with and without additive lighting techniques. If you know nothing about the Enfuse method of photographing real estate you will know just about everything after going through their comprehensive eBook. Each step of the process is broken down: photographic capture technique, how to bracket when using the Enfuse method, what to do, why you should do it and how to do it, with clear photographic captures that illustrate the entire process. Also included is a step by step process for batch processing in Lightroom and using Stacks with Enfuse. Their eBook “Enfuse for Real Estate Photography,” must have taken a long time to write because it really does cover every facet and aspect of photographing and employing Enfuse from capture to processing the entire tonal range without the need to do tedious layering in Photoshop. Hey, there is nothing wrong with Photoshop, I use it all the time. But as Simon Maxwell points out….”It’s not rocket science, but
you do need to be methodical about your approach and to understand the process, so as to make it a truly useful and time saving tool.” And if you use Enfuse correctly as outlined in their eBook you will save lots of time.

One point struck me however – the fact that ebooks are updated. I purchased Scott Hargis’s guide to lighting interiors in 2012 and I haven’t seen any updates. Perhaps I’m missing them? This might be the case for others as well. Please could you explain how to go about getting updated versions?

@Simon – When we update an ebook we send an update to every email address that was ever used to purchase that title. The problem is people change email addresses and don’t always manage their SPAM filtering well so 30% to 40% of the download links for the updates never are downloaded. If you need an update just ask me and I’ll verify that you purchased the title and send you a new download link.

I purchased “Image Editing for Real Estate Photography” last week and I’m finding it to be an excellent resource so far. I agree that the book format is a step beyond the traditional “E-book” format, as the PDF file can be viewed on any device or alternatively individual pages can be printed. The PDF format also benefits from internal hyperlinks (e.g. from the Table of Contents), and text searching.

@Felix – Sure here are the dates on the current PDFs being distributed:
Business Of Real Estate Photography: 6/3/2014
Enfuse For Real Estate Photography: 2/3/2015
Image Editing For RE Photography: 10/12/2012
Lighting Interiors: 1/16/2014
Photography For Real Estate: 2/15/2012 … I’m currently working on a update to be released in about a month

To check the dates on your PDF right click on the file and on Macs select “get Info” and on windows select “properties”

I was about to order the hard copy of “Lighting Interiors” but am confused about updates. Will I be updated by email of the updates like PFRE purchasers(“everyone that has ever purchased the book gets an updated copy. Some of our books have been updates 2 or 3 times.” ) or are the hard copy purchasers for some reason excluded from these updates? (” Get all future updates free – Updates sent only to the e-mail address you use to purchase the e-book with.”). Since the hardcopy costs 3 times the ebook, it would be nice if the updates were sent to the hardcopy purchaser as well. Thanks.

@John – You are right, if you purchase a hardcopy through lulu.com you don’t get updates. This is because I don’t even know who purchases the lulu.com hardcopies… I don’t get email addresses or names or anything so there’s no way I can sent updates. It’s much the same as if I sold hardcopies through Amazon… they are just regular books.

This is why it make much more sense to purchase the PDF version and print it on a laser printer and spiral bid it yourself… it’s easy. If you don’t have a laser printer find a friend with one.

For printing the eBooks, I’d prefer to have all my hard copies in the same orientation. A few of the eBooks are in portrait orientation while others are in landscape, do you have an easy fix to print them all in portrait? I’m using Acrobat and cannot figure out how to print the BoREP, PRFE, and Editing RE Photog books in the same format as Lighting Interiors and Enfuse. Thanks.

@jon – In a month all the books but Image Editing For Real Estate will be in vertical (portrait) format. You can still print the books in landscape format. For the two that are currently in landscape mode, just print them like the ones in portrait format and bind/punch them along the top.

Back before the advent of tablets we had them in landscape format because everyone liked that best on laptops.